Do Americans expect people to know English when they travel

[YtownGuy]

Originally Posted by Tom Lennox 70

Where do you live? You don't even have migrant farm workers there who don't speak English?

I'm living in Youngstown, Ohio and I've never met a migrant farm worker here--ever. The immigrants I've met here have all spoken at least a little English. It's never perfect and rarely pretty, but it's usually enough to get by.

I don't expect visitors to learn English, and I don't assume non-English-speaking people in their own countries to speak English, but I expect people who move to this country to make a reasonable attempt to learn enough English to function among people who don't speak their language.

[Trimac20]

Originally Posted by Acajack

You've been abroad 25 times and you've never run into someone who didn't speak English? I find this really hard to believe. I can speak what are probably the three most widely-spoken European languages (English, French and Spanish), I haven't been overseas as often as you, and I've run into to frequent situations where I couldn't communicate with people in either of the three. I've had to deal with people who spoke only German, only Italian, only Portuguese, only Dutch (rare I realize but it happens), only Flemish (yessir, I've been there), only Polish, only Czech, only Hungarian, etc.

Maybe Chicagoland has only been to Australia and the UK. Lol just kidding.

If you only stick with your tour group, communicate with tourist and hotel staff, restaurant staff.etc then you might get by with English only. If you talk with street-vendors or something it's a different story. I usually get by with a combination of sign language or a few phrases. A surprising number of them do understand basic words and phrases though.